


How Low Can You Go (Cuz I Wanna Know)

by stardustedknuckles



Series: Beauyasha College AU [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: College AU, F/F, First Meeting, No relation to the limbo lol, Title is from a new song I'm obsessed with, and then you do, drug use mention (minor), it's about the vulnerability, that awkward moment when you have a good moment with someone you never expect to see again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:13:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27688763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: Beau has a spectacular night at a party with an absolutely devastating woman who sort of seems like she might actually kill her with kindness. Or her tongue. Beau doesn't really mind either way. She lets more of herself show than she might normally - she can't seem to help it - and then vanishes into the night expecting that to be that. It always has been.Yasha showed up at a party a few weeks ago at Molly's behest and ended up in a closet getting to know a cocksure woman extremely well, and the firecracker of her personality lingers still a few weeks later as she considers a photography assignment. She's got a good idea, but it can't actually happen.Right?
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Series: Beauyasha College AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024825
Comments: 8
Kudos: 163





	How Low Can You Go (Cuz I Wanna Know)

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a whole aesthetic piece and then I realized nope, actually it's how the Beau and Yasha from my College AU met. And then it exploded.

Beau leaned against a table made for sitting and looked around the courtyard of the huge estate, scanning the crowds of drunk/high/super high people standing around or dancing in colorful bursts of tops and shorts and straps and sweat. A slight breeze ruffled through her own tank and joggers, cool on the shaved sides of her head. Behind the white fence at her back, someone yelped as they were pushed into the pool. Shrieks of laughter erupted immediately after, taking to the night sky like strange birds.

It was a good night, objectively, but Beau didn't come to these things when the night was already good. Hers had been shitty, and if she spent another minute waiting for Tori to stop stringing her along and give a straight answer on whether or not Beau could stay on her couch the first week of school, she was going to explode. Sometimes that was why she came to these things - because she was running from something and needed to cut loose, turn her brain off for a while. Sometimes, she came without realizing she was running until the thrum of energy under her fingers got to feeling so powerful that she imagined it must be glowing to anyone who would just look.

Like now.

Beau's hand clenched into a fist as she looked over the crowd again. Surely someone here was searching for her kind of energy. She could see everyone else - couldn't they see her?

She lifted her cup, found it empty, contemplated it with a moment of self-evaluation before making her way to the spacious parlor in search of a top-up. She didn't tend to find the people she was looking for outside anyway, she reminded herself She'd just needed the space for a minute. Besides, there was something comforting about stale air and skin on skin trying to maneuver hallways and around drink tables. Grounded her, even in the midst of her running.

Beau glanced around as she snagged a can of something generic and shitty from a table and popped the tab absentmindedly. Part of her thought that maybe she should just go home, but the issues with that line of reasoning were too long for her softened thoughts to make sense of - which had been by design.

She couldn't go anywhere with all that energy coiled inside of her. Either she found a way to release it, or it would create its own avenue - and that's how people ended up with criminal histories. It would be better, then, to lower her standards and take another look. She could figure out where she was sleeping after. Beau sighed and started her rounds again, noting a few of the people she'd already seen but set aside…and then she felt it, stood up straight and peered with intent. The bass from the living room thrummed suddenly in her heart, her stomach, her thighs. What had she seen, and where?

It didn't take long to find her - Beau's mistake had been looking for someone curious, for potential to seize. The girl off close to the corner with the loose flannel and the ripped blue jeans and the slight flush to her cheeks wasn't just watching Beau casually. She was _staring_. Her look was one of intention - it was the look Beau usually gave, and it startled her to have been the one called. Because that's exactly what happened - she had been willed to spot this woman. Beau lifted a hand in response, curled a finger as she took a sip from her can. Not the best trick in her book, but sheer surprise at being on the receiving end of one of her own looks had caused something of a quick short in her reflexes.

Her mouth quirked slowly into the kind of smile that said she knew what Beau was doing and might be convinced to play along if she felt like it. Beau thought dimly that maybe that shouldn't have been as hot to think about as it was, but then she was coming towards Beau and it felt like an agreement had been reached.

Beau had to look up to talk to her over the music. "You've been here before?" Gods, she was so much bigger up close than Beau had thought. A wonder of muscle and height and a kind of quiet self-assuredness that usually come from a smugness that made Beau itch to break it into pieces. Not for her though - on this one the confidence just seemed well-earned.

She looked around for a moment, then back at Beau. "Did you call me over just to talk?"

Beau grinned, shook her head. "Not on your life," she called. "Just wondered if you already had a spot in mind."

"In that case, no." She didn't sound like she was trying to be louder. Beau heard her loud and clear anyway. "Lead the way." She took Beau's hand and gave a kind of curtsy that did something funny to Beau's ribs. She took another pull from her beer and three-point tossed it into an overflowing trash can without looking. "Nice," said the woman. She sounded genuinely impressed. Beau suddenly noticed her eyes were two different colors, mostly because of how close she was leaning in to say: "Now take us somewhere private so I can show you _my_ tricks." Beau nodded, tugged her hand - without another word, they were off.

As they hit the base of the stairs hand in hand, there was a small explosion outside, chased by cheering. Yeah, Beau thought as she led her new companion past the amateurs necking in the halls. That captured the feeling just about right.

Big houses had big closets. Fuckoff huge houses had whole rooms for storage, which meant any actual closets were a little smaller - but they came with inside locks that not just anyone could pick. A real perk in Beau's experience and one of the main reasons she even bothered with showing up at the bigger parties. They hadn't let her down yet, and the extra chance to show off her skills never hurt.

"Hot," said the woman as she flipped on the light, and the complete sincerity of that one word made Beau stumble on the threshold as she followed.

Beau was a lights off kind of girl, but she knew even before the door shut behind them that she wasn't willing to waste a second of drinking this one in if she didn't have to. Her name was Yasha, and Beau was quickly forgetting hers as she let herself get lost in the way their cheeks brushed, the way it felt to slide a hand inside of her shirt and trail it up along her spine just to watch her shudder before leaning down to drop an open-mouthed kiss on Beau's collarbone.

Beau didn't go looking for random encounters because she wanted to feel connected to people, but Yasha's thumbs on her hipbones felt like they belonged there, like they'd been away and had spent every moment dying to return. Beau's tongue darted to taste the bottom of Yasha's throat and she groaned in a way that took Beau's boxers from damp to ruined in an instant.

Beau didn't bother keeping track of how long they spent just touching each other, palming clothes and tasting exposed skin. This wasn't her usual - the longer Beau spent with someone like this, the more likely it would be that they would say something dumb, like, "I want to see you again." Every extra second she lingered was that much higher a chance of blowing the whole night.

But whatever need it was that prompted others to say that to Beau was missing entirely from Yasha, and gods dammit how could someone made of more muscle than her be so _soft?_ Her fingers pressed into Beau's shoulders, her jaw, as undemanding as the tongue that rubbed on hers almost like a comfort. Beau kept waiting to feel the pinprick in the back of her mind - that moment of transition from a casual good time to an expectation - but Yasha just kept exploring contentedly.

When those large fingers finally pressed under Beau's waistband, Beau's hips twitched in a way that would've been embarrassing if she hadn't spent the last however long testing for the edge of expectation and finding nothing before giving up entirely.

Yasha's voice was low and a little scratchy, tickling at the hollow under Beau's ear. "Can I?"

Arousal pooled through the haze of her thoughts, smothering them. "Be my guest."

The pool sharpened into a lance as Yasha's hands slid inside Beau's boxers without further prompting to cup her ass, and the little noise that dropped from Beau at the sensation of Yasha's fingers kneading her there surprised and sort of pleased her.

She could only stare as Yasha flashed her a small, bright smile and sank slowly to her knees, dragging Beau's pants down with her before leaning forward to press a kiss to the shadow of Beau's thigh without looking away. It should've made her uncomfortable, feeling for a wild second like she wasn't completely leading this thing, but everything about the way Yasha moved suggested a conversation - like she was still listening to Beau as much as she was winding her up.

If this was the trick she'd mentioned, if only just this, Beau would be alright with that. But she suspected it wasn't, somehow, that Yasha was just _like this._

Yasha's teeth brushed over the soft skin just beside the end of Beau's happy trail, and she licked a small stripe along it and grinned when Beau's fingers tightened on the shoulders of the delightfully rumpled t-shirt that had been under the flannel. Still watching her, Yasha parted Beau's curls with her nose and then the hot slide of her tongue between Beau's folds incinerated every thought in her head. Her knees gave a little, and Yasha's strong hand on one of her hips tightened with a strength behind them that left no doubt in Beau's mind that if her legs collapsed entirely, Yasha could keep her up.

When she dropped her head back down, Yasha was looking up at her through her lashes with an awed expression - like she was the one getting the attention, somehow. Her tongue circled Beau's clit and dropped lower to tease at her entrance, and fuck, Beau needed to be out of these pants entirely by yesterday -

Yasha paused long enough to pull Beau's pants and boxers the rest of the way down and help her step out of one leg of them, and then she grasped Beau's calf and pulled it up over her shoulder to dive back in as Beau's back slammed against the shelf of towels behind her with a small moan.

She managed not to full-on whine, but it was a close thing. She kept one hand tangled lightly in Yasha's hair and set her teeth on the other to breathe hard through her nose and keep from crying out loud enough to alert the whole house even over the music that still seemed to make the doorframe vibrate from two stories up. Yasha looked up at her and pulled back, eyes blown wide and a shiny string of Beau's slick hovering from her lips to Beau's cunt for a delicate moment before dissolving. "Can I use my fingers?"

Everything about Yasha was already ruining Beau, and the light accent on top of it all rendered her unable to do anything but nod before the pale hand not grasping Beau's thigh over her shoulder slipped from her hip to press two fingers against Beau's heat with hardly a pause before sinking in effortlessly to the knuckle. The sight was so much that Beau had to bite on her hand and look up, away from those eyes looking at her like that and those shiny, swollen lips. Beau's shoulder jumped when Yasha's mouth sealed over her clit, and a small stack of towels tumbled to the floor soundlessly as Yasha fucked her at a measured and merciless pace. Every time Beau's senses allowed her a moment to look down and catch her breath, it was to find Yasha either watching her or just opening her eyes to find her face as she enthusiastically took Beau apart.

Beau wasn't sure why a small part of her kind of wanted to thank Yasha out loud when her orgasm faded, but she pushed it down and tugged on Yasha's shirt - up, up now. Yasha rose to meet her and went willingly when Beau leveraged her weight to press that large body up against the opposite shelf with a vague sound of disturbed shoes tumbling. Beau tasted herself on Yasha's lips and took the bottom one between her teeth to suck it, relishing the way Yasha's whole body shuddered and her eyes, odd colors in the yellow incandescence, fluttered shut.

Beau nuzzled her cheek on Yasha's and bit her earlobe just gently between two of the rings studding her ears, sliding her own hands just inside the hem of Yasha's shirt to scratch at the hard plane of muscle she found above her navel. "My turn to take care of you," she said. Yasha's body tensed under her hands, and Beau paused for a slow, stupid moment to process before pulling back to look up to her face.

She looked hesitant, but her fingers on Beau's skin started to move again slowly. "Be gentle?"

Beau blinked. It made a kind of sense, that this woman with those muscles should be so soft, and hell it was probably the weed mellowing her, but there was an ache in Beau's chest when she smiled in reassurance and pressed another kiss to Yasha's throat. "Tell me what you like."

* * *

Yasha liked taking photos. She liked looking at the world and figuring out how best to capture it in its most truthful light so that others could see what she saw. She liked her classes, she liked her new apartment and her new life, and she liked her energetic blue classmate - who had just asked her a question, she realized with a start.

"Ah, sorry," she said. "Could you ask again?"

Jester flashed her one of those sharp grins of hers and poked her thigh. "I asked if you had any ideas for the project, but forget that - tell me what's got you looking so dreamy." She drew the last word out and leaned in, waiting.

Yasha couldn't help but smile back. Something in the energy of this girl made it impossible for Yasha to dislike the mannerisms that were usually - always - the sort to drive her away or make her uncomfortable. Something about the way Jester simply did what she wanted but never let Yasha feel like she couldn't say no…it was nice.

Yasha tilted her notebook a little so that Jester could see. "I was actually thinking about the project, kind of," she said. "I know the look I'm going for, I even have ideas of where I'd put her and how." She smiled softly down at the rough sketch she'd penciled in during class and had been shading absently under the tree with Jester until she'd gotten too lost in her thoughts.

"Who was she?" Jester asked, tilting her head and squinting at the sketch. "She looks like a friend of mine."

"Someone I met at the party my friend Molly dragged me to. She had this…presence, it was amazing."

Jester frowned, and expression that never looked so much as though it belonged on a child as when she made it. "Was her name Beau?"

Yasha shook her head. "Leo, she said. We had…an amazing time, and I looked away for a moment to check on Molly. I think…" she hesitated. "I think maybe she was nervous about hanging out, after we." She made a flippant gesture with her hand and flushed when Jester's eyes widened in delight.

"You had sex with her?"

Yasha blinked at her. "Is that not what people go to those sorts of events for?"

"Oh definitely," Jester said too quickly, nodding in a way that told Yasha that she had never been to an actual party in her life. "You just said you were dragged, is all. I figured you might be a wallflower type."

"Ah," said Yasha, laughing a little. "Your mistake. I was dragged, but I didn't see a reason to let that stop me." She leaned back against the tree, still smiling. "Still," she sighed. "I had given up on finding anyone to pass the time with when I saw her. All those people, a few of them promising enough, but I saw her, and…I don't know." Her voice softened. "It was different from the moment the door shut."

She's gotten on her knees for Leo, let her take over in the way she clearly needed to in order to feel comfortable - that's what was different, but she was keeping that for herself.

"That's basically the sweetest thing I've ever heard," said Jester, but her eyes were on the notebook and she sounded almost an autopilot as she squinted harder. "Can I see that?"

Yasha handed over the notebook and watched in confused interest as Jester held it up and tilted it just slightly. "Did she have an eyebrow piercing?" Yasha remembered the way the shadows of the dim closet had played over Leo's face, how her cheek had felt under Yasha's thumb. Over her eye, two small dark spots that Yasha had not noticed as any more than possible freckles.

"I think she may have," she said. "But it was out while she was there." The implications hit her all at once and she found her heart in her throat as looked back down to find Jester scrolling quickly through her phone.

"Here." She held it up for Yasha to take with suddenly cold hands. Most of the photo was of an indistinct figure with dark green skin, laid flat on their back on a bench and clearly straining to lift the barbell off their chest. The caption read "lol he almost made it to 10 this time."

Even blurrier, washed out by the lighting of whatever gym they were in, was half a shit-eating grin, an eyebrow piercing, and one half of the pair of blue, blue eyes Yasha had been seeing in her head for a month now. "That's her." Yasha barely heard her own voice. "That's Leo."

Jester smacked herself in the forehead. "Leo! Lionett!" Yasha watched her, mystified. Jester's eyes slid to her, heel of her hand still pressed against her brow. "Her name's Beau Lionett," she explained. "She made up a first name from her last name. It's a very Beau thing for her to do."

"Oh," said Yasha. She knew a few reasons for someone to give a fake name at a party. None of them suggested anything particularly good, especially for someone as sincere as this girl had been in everything else. "Beau," she said gently. "I like it."

Jester wiggled with furious excitement as she slid her phone back in her pocket. "I could totally ask Beau to be in your project! She'd say yes, I know it."

Yasha's mouth opened to reply, but she had no idea what was going to come out. It didn't matter - she never got the chance.

"What am I saying yes to?" Yasha looked up as a figure swung down from the outdoor seating patio to the grass where they sat below, landing behind Jester with a self-assured thump. Her hands found their way back into the pockets of her basketball shorts like holsters as she straightened up.

Jester whipped around with an "Oh hi Beau!" but Yasha was frozen and staring hard in shock. Beau's eyes widened in a split second of recognition and surprise of her own, and then it was gone as quickly as it had come, like it had never been there.

"Hey Jes," she said. She nodded to Yasha, a strict guard over her that made her look completely different from the girl who'd watched her with unabashed awe and affection as Yasha ate her out - closed off and suggesting nothing of her quiet and easy laughter that seemed to have surprised her as much as it had pleased Yasha to hear it as they talked outside, after. Yasha was struck with a kind of unexpected sadness. "Yasha, right?" said Beau.

Yasha nodded and smiled weakly. "Leo."

Beau did laugh then, but it was a weapon. "Yeah, sorry," she said. "I think I'm clever sometimes." Her arms pulled from her pockets, folded over her chest. "You guys know each other?"

Yasha didn't have time to make sense of the ease with which Beau turned the conversation away from her, the way she implied that people gave fake names all the time just for kicks. "We have photography together!" Jester announced. "Yasha's pretty much the greatest."

Yasha smiled a little at Jester, but she felt like she was falling through space when Beau huffed a laugh that rang with the implication of mockery despite its absence - like the fact it had been withheld was itself drawing attention to its customary place. "If she likes you, Jes, she's gotta be alright." She reached out an old Converse to nudge Jester's leg with a kind of roughness that came with immense familiarity. "Now what are you volunteering me for?"

"Oh!" said Jester. "Yasha had an idea for our project coming up, and it looks like _you_ ," she wiggled her eyebrows. "Made quite the impression."

Yasha could not rule out the possibility that she'd died for a moment during the silence that followed. There was no part of her that would have done that night any differently in any way - it wasn't that she was second guessing her decisions or ashamed of them. It was Beau she was concerned about, how she might react. Yasha had never been good at saying anything other than what she meant, be it with her body, her expression, or her voice, but she could tell from just a moment of seeing Beau in the light of day that the version of her that had kissed Yasha so reverently in the closet was one she kept well away from the world. Yasha had not been meant to see it, or at least had been trusted with it on terms of anonymity that had now been broken.

Finally some of the tension eased from Beau's shoulders and she shrugged easily enough, though she wasn't looking at Yasha in a way that suggested she was still acutely aware of her. "I'm a dynamic encounter, what can I say?" She flashed a grin with too many teeth and now she did look at Yasha, something wary in the tilt of her shoulders. "Photos, huh? You good at em?"

"Better than you," Jester teased.

"Ha ha." Beau deadpanned down to her. "I just wanna know what I'm signing on for here."

Jester stuck her tongue out. "Like I would volunteer you for amateur hour."

Beau made a face of acknowledgment and pulled her eyes right back to Yasha's. Yasha was slightly flushed from Jester's compliment but didn't look away, felt somehow that to do so would be to prove some suspicion brewing behind those sharp blue eyes. Instead, she spent a moment digging through the posture and expression being leveled at her, searching for the hints of the girl she'd met those weeks ago. It wasn't that the softness was hard to find - even if Yasha hadn't already seen it once, even if she hadn't known what to look for, Beau bore all the marks of someone who had learned to keep kindness far from prying eyes of people who would exploit it.

But hiding kindness from kind people was impossible, and Jester was the kindest person Yasha had ever met. The two of them were clearly bonded, and the evidence of "Leo" was there in her interactions with Jester.

"I'm free Tuesday," Beau said finally.

"I've got a full day then," Yasha replied. "Daylight will be gone." It wasn't technically true, and there was a distant part of her wondering what game she was playing, challenging the easy way Beau called the shots. "Thursday is better."

Beau peered at her. Yasha wanted to know what she was seeing, because she was a little unsure herself. "Thursday's cool," she said. "I work at the library, off at 3. Meet at the Starbucks?"

"Sounds good," said Yasha.

No, Yasha thought as Beau gave a careless wave and headed off to her next class. She wasn't surprised by that calloused behavior in the slightest.

She was floored, however, to find that there was a piece of _her_ that couldn't let go of the thought of being someone Beau could show that side to again - this time because they knew each other, not because they didn't.

And then again and again and again.

And yet. What did she really know about what was under that guard? What if it was there for a reason? Was it better not to get too close, let the person she'd met that night live in her memory?

Jester's hand rested on her forearm, gentle this time. "Yasha? You okay?"

Yasha took in her earnest expression, the way Jester felt everything loudly and on the surface, and remembered her earlier thought with relief. This little blue tiefling she already considered a friend was proof that there could be precious little in Beau that was as hard as the exterior she relied on. Yasha smiled, watching the dappled light drift over Jester's freckles in the late summer breeze. "I'm alright, yeah," she said. "That Beau is a special one, isn't she?"

"The best," said Jester sincerely. "You don't even know." She looked a little perplexed suddenly, her tail beginning to curl in on itself in the grass where it lay. "She makes it hard to get to know her," Jester said. "Well not for me. But I've seen her with new people, and…it's worth it, I super promise."

Yasha looked down at the sketch in her lap, which she'd covered with an arm as nonchalantly as possible at the sight of Beau's controlled expression. Not because she was embarrassed for Beau to see, but because Beau had needed to feel hidden. It was nice to think that maybe she could help draw the real Beau out in the same way she'd drawn her on the page. "Don't worry," she murmured to Jester. "I believe you."

**Author's Note:**

> And for a moment I was so excited about the new LP song that I lived in a world where the limbo didn't exist. Whoops.


End file.
